Once again the weather smiled upon us for the night of Faringdon Fireworks, incredible mild weather for November, in fact with temperatures of 20°c and above during the daytimes this week it's been more than mild! I can't believe that it is really that time of year again but we got togged up and trundled down to the grounds of Faringdon House with hundreds of others from the town last night. It's always lovely to see welly-booted families walking down every road in the town heading to the display, it makes for a lovely community atmosphere and the fireworks were, once again, spectacular! 

This was my first attempt at shooting fireworks with the X-T1 and I decided to try something a little different to my usual approach, this time focusing on longer exposures (most of which between 10 and 30 seconds). Anyway, enough of the geeky camera bit and onto the photos!

First the inevitable sparkler pictures, always good fun to shoot and I quite like the random results!

Then time to set up the camera on a tripod and fiddle around with those settings. One of the most useful features I have discovered on this camera is the ability to wirelessly link it to my iPhone and control it from there (isn't technology amazing?!). I am able to use the phone to set focus, ISO, aperture, shutter speed, white balance (and the rest!) and trigger the camera. It proved great for fireworks as I was actually able to leave the camera to do its stuff and enjoy watching the display with my own eyes, rather than through the viewfinder, for once!

The fireworks were fantastic, unfortunately (for me, not the rest of the crowd necessarily!), the bonfire was lit rather earlier than usual during the display, so I did find that the very bright light from it interfered with the long exposure shots of some of the fireworks, hence the orange glow in the corner of the last few pictures. Not a huge problem though in the grand scheme of things!

DSCF1204 DSCF1211 DSCF1216 DSCF1217 DSCF1222 DSCF1225 DSCF1226 DSCF1228 DSCF1229 DSCF1230 DSCF1244 DSCF1247 DSCF1248 Following the display it was naturally time to indulge in one of my favourite types of photography, silhouettes, The bonfire always provides a great opportunity to try these out... though my children are much less cooperative than they used to be when asked to pose for me, in fact Kitty and her friend completely refused... bless their little tweenage socks! I have no idea who the man in the hat is but he made a great silhouette so thanks should go to him for wearing it and happening to stand in the right place, even though he was blissfully unaware that he was on camera! :)

DSCF1272 DSCF1273

Rich and Henry were up for a bit of posing... well...sort of! DSCF1276 DSCF1277 I did eventually manage to convince Kitty to stand in front of me very briefly... and slightly begrudgingly! :) DSCF1284 And couldn't resist a few shots of their faces bathed in the warm light of the fire too! 

DSCF1293 DSCF1305 DSCF1310 And that's the end of another Fireworks night, it'll be Christmas before we know it!